Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

Bagins didn’t sit down and he didn’t offer us anything to sit on. He stopped in the corridor outside his own office and turned around on us.

"What have you got, Abram?"

He said it fast. No performance in it, none of the voice he used on the floor.

"Those men out there are hungry. Actually hungry, not metaphorically. I cannot hold four hundred starving people in a warehouse much longer and I need something to give them tonight."

"I got a call from someone close to Sinn," I said. "Sinn has the ability to stop the infection."

Bagins looked up at the ceiling.

Then he turned and walked into the office.

We followed him in. The thin table. The cobwebs in the corners. The same yellow bulb humming above the desk. He stopped on the far side of it and put both hands flat on the wood.

"Is this a joke to you?" His eyes came up to mine. "Is that what tonight is? Does any of this look like a joke to you?"

He put his boot into one of the chairs and sent it across the room. The chair hit the wall hard enough to leave a mark in the dust. The sound bounced once and died against the continuous low roar of the drill still running on the factory floor beyond the door.

"I was waiting for you to walk in here and tell me Sinn was dead. Or that you had something, anything, that I could carry out to those people who are standing in there waiting on me."

"Professor." I closed the space between us. The desk remained between our hands. "This isn’t about you."

He didn’t answer that. The silence he gave it was denser than the argument had been.

"I know what you think you’re building. Whatever else you are, I don’t think you’re doing it to make these walls worse." I held his eyes. "But none of us need the infection. Not you, not Sinn, not them. It’s eating both sides at exactly the same rate and neither of you is winning."

"He’s right," Mercury said from behind me. The words carried no negotiation.

"Just shut—" Bagins’ voice went up and he caught it and brought it back down. The effort of the control showed in his jaw. "How am I involved in Sinn’s chaos? Explain that part to me."

"Because you’re one of the few people alive he sees as a threat to his seat."

Mercury dropped into a chair, leaving the two of us standing.

"That’s your leverage. That’s the only leverage anybody has on that man right now. You call him and you tell him you’re not coming for his chair. You give him that, in your own voice, and the one condition you attach to it is that he stops the infection."

"And why would I do that?" Bagins spread his hands. The gesture took in the office, the drill beyond the door, the four hundred hungry men on the other side of the thin walls. "What do I gain from an infection ending and Sinn still sitting on top of everything?"

"It’s what’s best for the walls. And for your men." I let it sit. "Unless you’re fighting for something other than what you’ve been telling them."

He looked at me for a long moment. Somewhere on the factory floor a voice called a number and hundreds of throats answered it in unison. The sound came through the walls muffled and relentless.

"Fine."

He walked to the desk.

"Fine. So you want me to dial Sinn."

"Yes."

He shook his head and pulled a device out of the drawer. The motion was sharp, almost disgusted.

"You want me to tell him to stop the infection, and in exchange I stand my men down." He set it on the desk. The plastic clicked against the wood. "That’s the offer."

"Yeah."

I moved to the desk. Mercury got up and came to stand with us. The two of us filled the small space on one side of the thin table while Bagins stood on the other with the device under his hand and the whole of the warehouse’s noise pressing against the door behind us.

"Fine," Bagins said again, mostly to himself, and dialled.

The ringing came out into the room. Mercury’s shoulder brushed mine. Neither of us moved away from the contact.

I took Mercury’s hand and the two of us stood behind him. Her fingers closed hard around mine. The call kept ringing.

It connected.

"Lord Sinn. Lord and ruler of the walls speaking. To whom am I speaking?"

The voice filled the small office without effort. Mercury’s grip tightened around my fingers.

"Robert Bagins."

"Bagins." Nothing moved in his voice at all. The name landed like something already sentenced. "You traitor. Your trial is waiting for you."

"I’ve called to make a deal. I need you to listen to me for one minute."

"There is nothing to discuss with you. I am the Lord of these walls."

Bagins turned his head and looked back at me.

I tried. That was all the look said. The tired eyes. The thinned mouth. The particular exhaustion of a man who had just confirmed what he already knew about the person on the other end of the line.

"General." I stepped up to the desk. The word left my mouth before I could replace it with the title he’d chosen. "It’s Abram."

"Abram." Everything in his voice changed. The formality cracked along one edge and something almost human came through—recognition, relief, the brief unguarded sound of a man who had been waiting for a different voice and had finally heard it. "How are you?"

"I’m good. How are you?"

"I’m well." A pause. The humanity began to close again. "Though I notice Bagins’ camp was easier for you to reach than my headquarters. Is he the important person you told me you were with?"

"No. It’s a long story and we don’t have time for it, sir."

"Then cut it. Why have you called me?"

"Because we think you can stop the infection." I kept it level. "Stop it, and your government won’t have an opposition left. The opposition loses its reason to exist."

"My government."

He took one word out of the whole sentence. The emphasis was precise and absolute and rearranged everything that had come before it.

"Did Melissa put you up to this call? I removed her from my office ten minutes ago."

"General—"

"Abram. I am the Lord of these walls. Nobody tells me to do anything." His voice hadn’t risen once. "And if you have been walking around believing that you mean something to me, you don’t."

The sentence landed and stayed. Mercury’s hand in mine was the only solid thing in the office for a second.

"Sinn." Mercury leaned in. Her free hand found the edge of the desk.

Bagins stood off to the side with his arms folded, listening. The smile that had started when I took the call had not survived the last thirty seconds.

"So you’re with Mercury as well." He laughed. The sound was short and empty of everything the earlier recognition had held. "Then gather whoever else you like. Build your opposition. Fill a warehouse. And you will all find out exactly who Lord Sinn is."

"Fuck you," Mercury said.

The line went dead.

The soft click of the ended call was the only ordinary sound left in the room. The drill on the factory floor continued its rhythm. Bagins looked at me. Waiting now. Not hostile. Just waiting to see what I actually had, because we’d both watched the only easy version of this night end on a desk in a room full of cobwebs.

"We go to the headquarters," I said.

Bagins nodded slowly. The decision moved through his face and settled. Whatever else the call had cost him, it had also simplified the board. Sinn had refused a negotiation. The building was still there. The men on the factory floor were still hungry and still his.

"That means walking through the infected," Mercury said. "All of us. Four hundred people through streets full of them."

"Fuck the zombies." Bagins was already smiling.